Sophie Campbell

Not easy, Legacy (note the capital ‘L’). It’s what every bid team talks about as they compete with other countries to stage an Olympic Games. For the people left in charge of that legacy, including after London 2012, it can feel as if the show has left town, leaving the proverbial empty cash drawer.

Right now in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (QEOP), however, a cultural relay race appears to be under way. On May 31, the Victoria & Albert Museum opens the V&A East Storehouse, a year or so in advance of its sister museum and exhibition space, V&A East, one on either side of the park.

For decades, the decorative arts behemoth in South Kensington has stored the bulk of its four-million-object collection in a dim building in nearby West Kensington. Now 250,000 items will be on display and partly accessible to the public in Here East, the former Media Centre for the Olympics.

It’s the latest in a series of openings in or near the East Bank, the new cultural quarter in (or, as parkies say, ‘on’) the QEOP. The name is a nod to London’s post-war arts complex on the South Bank, with its mix of people, culture and concrete, but instead of the River Thames it overlooks the River Lea.

Sadler’s Wells East, the third dance venue in the eponymous group, opened here in February. Dublin architects O’Donnell Tuomey, who masterplanned the new riverside quarter and designed two of its four buildings, consulted dancers, choreographers and management before creating an airy volume of brick, timber and glass with a huge, welcoming foyer (there are signs outside to say so).

In one corner is a public dance space that, if empty, is open to anyone who rolls up and plugs in their music. On the walls are tapestries by the Irish artist Eva Rothschild, made at West Dean in Sussex.

Above, six light-filled studios nurture the next generation of artists and choreographers. The hip hop academy, many of whose dancers are East Enders, is based here. And the 550-seat auditorium, with a steep rake but no balcony, is designed for flexiblity; seats can be taken out and the floor flattened.

Two minutes upriver is the University of the Creative Arts’ campus for the London College of Fashion (LCF), open since Autumn 2023, its huge windows giving anyone strolling by a glimpse of the fashion future, from hat-making to grad shows. Inside, a smooth concrete staircase spirals upwards, students come and go, there’s a public making space and a 350-seat lecture theatre open to all.

One tenant is the 12-year-old Fashion Innovation Agency, which works to integrate tech into the fashion industry. They now work with students as well, giving them access to advice, experience and the use of a sophisticated 136-camera ‘cage’ that allows them to make volumetric or 3D portfolios.

LCF’s academic neighbour is UCL East, the University of London’s campus over the river, opened around the same time, which aims to be a ‘Global University’, offering inter-disciplinary courses that cross the barriers between science, art and humanities, and collaborating with other East Bankers.

There’s a lot of art here, too. Students work in the Marshgate Building, designed by the London firm Stanton Williams almost beneath the crazy red twists and turns of Anish Kapoor’s Olympic-era steel sculpture, the Arcelor Mittal Orbit. Suspended above a soaring concrete foyer is Luke Jarram’s globe, Gaia, and at eye level is a video artwork built into a recreated tree (the art changes, the tree remains). There’s also a public cafe partly staffed by cute little ‘foodservice’ robots.

Between them, UCL and UCA have pumped around 10,000 students into the QEOP ecosystem, bringing life and energy to vast, Olympic Games-scaled spaces, one of the biggest challenges in legacy.

When the V&A East Storehouse opens its doors at the end of this month, it will have four levels of purpose built storage space, designed to hold half-a-million objects, books and archival items.

There will be 100 curated mini-displays tacked onto the ends of the huge storage racks, covering science, arts, activism, conservation and new acquisitions, as well as unwieldy exhibits such as an entire Frank Lloyd Wright interior (the only one outside the US) and a two-storey section of the Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar, demolished five years after the Olympics.

Best of all, you can ask to see an item in advance. Just you.

Next year, V&A East will focus on contemporary culture and East London, aiming to open its pointy-toed building in the Spring. And BBC Music Studios, the final piece in the puzzle, opens as a recording, performing and broadcasting facility to replace the lamented Maida Vale Studios.

There are, of course,  losers in this game, as a heartfelt video made by less affluent local residents explained in a recent student exhibition at UCL East. Rents are up, affordable housing is hard to find and the old landscape has gone forever. Other critics question the amount of public money that has gone into the Olympics and Legacy, or complain about the lack of heritage buildings across the park.

All the while, the many (and multiplying) residents of the QEOP goes about their business, living, working, going to school, eating, shopping, maybe even playing and watching sport. In under a generation, an entire new quarter of London has emerged, with the TV soap East Enders‘ postcode, E20, and pretty well everything that you need for urban living.

Gold medals all round, I’d say.